![]() ![]() "By making this another type of content you can put into this canvas," he says, referring to Quip documents, "it makes spreadsheets more accessible."īoth Smith and Marc Bodnick, who uses Quip inside the online startup Quora, say that although they don't yet have access to the Quid spreadsheet tool, it's the next logical step in the evolution of the service-and a needed thing. But more than that, Taylor wants to bring the power of spreadsheets to a new kind of user, to make it easier for even the average worker to juggle numbers. Yes, Quip can now cut into the use of Excel as well. "It has probably cut by Word use by 90 percent." "I'm spending a lot less time in Office and a lot more time in Quip," he says. According to Taser CEO Smith, for instance, Quip has significantly cut into the company's use of older tools. And though these tools are used alongside all sorts of other software tools, they're very much changing the way businesses do things. According to Taylor, Quip is now used by 10,000 businesses. What's undeniable is that we're moving away from traditional office software. The document-in this case, the spreadsheet-serves that primary goal." ![]() "We're trying to reimagine the productivity suite around communication and collaboration as its primary function. "As we were designing this, our vision wasn't Microsoft Office for tablets," Taylor explains. The idea is to break down the barriers between apps that often hamper the way we work. But Quip does it in a uniquely fluid way. Yes, there are other ways of doing this kind of thing. "Just as you can insert an image or a link, you can insert a spreadsheet." You can embed spreadsheets in other documents, with everything else," Taylor says, as he demonstrates the tool at his startup's offices in San Francisco, alongside company co-founder Kevin Gibbs. ![]() It lets you integrate spreadsheets-or snippets of spreadsheets or simply data pulled from spreadsheets-into any other document you're working on. It doesn't work like, say, Google's online spreadsheet service. It's not an online version of Microsoft Excel. "So the meetings are cut in half-or more."īy the same token, Quip's new spreadsheet tool-released on Thursday-isn't what it might seem. "People just comment back and forth, before the meetings," he says. At Taser International, top executives use it to build an agenda for their weekly meeting-among other things-and according to CEO Rick Smith, they end up finishing half the meeting over Quip, thanks to that chat tool. But ultimately, the point is that it turns document editing into a collaborative process, where multiple people can not only shape the same document over the internet and keep track of their many changes, but also discuss what they're doing by way of a built-in chat tool. Yes, it plays nicely with mobile devices, and yes, it lets you edit documents. When Quip debuted last year, it was pegged as a " mobile-first word processor," a 21st-century rethink of Microsoft Word that runs on phones and tablets as well as desktops and laptops. Such a request isn't uncommon when someone builds a new piece of software, but it's particularly appropriate with Quip. He wants to show me how it works, face-to-face. When I email Bret Taylor about the new spreadsheet tool built into Quip-the online collaboration service he helped create after stepping down as Facebook's chief technology officer-he's happy to talk about it.
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